Etern4l

AiBs needn't be too concerned as the main effect of Nvidia's online stores is customer disappointment and irritation with the consistently poor availability. A lot of it is just links to partner websites selling laptops. Meanwhile there are AIB 4090 cards at MSRP to boot elsewhere. Who knew the pool of buyers willing to drop $2k on a graphics card is limited!

Fair enough. There are many realities, but generally there is a typical, say Western reality, and a very different Microcenter customer's reality lol

Did you pick an average sold price for that spec or an optimistic outlier price (which may or may not have resulted in a successful transaction)? Did you deduct the 20% ebay fee? Did you include sales tax in the purchase price for the new laptop? Assuming the answers to Qs 2 and 3 alone are no, and applying an optimistic sales tax of 5%, the actual laptop upgrade cost is $2,893

A desktop is partially upgradable and trivially repairable. My case is 15 years old, PSU lasted 14 years, fans lasted 15 years (actually they are still OK, just upgraded to 3K RPM), an AIO should be good for 5 years+. If I need a faster GPU, I can replace just this component without touching anything else. I can reuse that component in another PC, or sell it - selling a graphics card is presumably easier and inherently less risky than selling a high-end laptop. A $2300 13900K+4090 combo will provide 1.5x+ CPU processing power, and the GPU will be about 2x faster than the fastest BGA laptop, while featuring 50% more VRAM. Laptops are a s... poor deal. The only reason to get them is for convenience and mobility. Luckily in my case, both of these requirements just involve working unplugged, therefore a top spec laptop is not needed, so when the time comes I won't be paying the BGA mob off too excessively. I will be just getting the baseline config that does the job. No heavy lifting required. Fortunately, one thing my AW laptops have going for them is that they are built quite well and last ages ;)

It's the same size, however, it has two extra spare tires in place of the 2 removed passenger seats at the back :) Nobody asked for that, but it's cheaper for the manufacturer, while the price of the "upgraded" car went up. (referring to the slashed memory bus/bandwidth, in case that wasn't obvious)

I want a sedan with 5 seats. Nvidia's new model only has 3, they cut the number of seats hoping people will be OK with it because it's a new and shiny model.

I would only do this if temps required it. Its quite possible has the GPU already has an excellent TIM on, possibly the phase change stuff. The GPU I repasted recently with CryoFuze gained nothing from the exercise at best. Today I wouldn't bother with a legacy thermal paste.

Many thanks for the confirmatory data point. Sorry about the laptop.

A few points here: * I'm not sure PTM7950 is worse than LM, at all - LTT review suggests it outperforms it (I haven't tried LM on IHS, and now I won't because I don't have to) * PTM7950 is miles above than any other traditional paste I have tried (Phobya, SYY157, TFX, CryoFuze, Apex, MX6) * As bro @Papusan mentioned GPUs downclock slightly, but there is also a longevity/endurance argument - for heavy action, I'd rather have the GPU run under 70C Anyway, I don't have a need for any GPU repastes at the moment, but perhaps someone experimented with a GPU application on a laptop could shed some light on the matter.

I wanted to crack an Alienware joke, but they don't even have a 4090 model out yet. Oh dear.

Only one way to find out. I suspect bro @tps3443 has the Titan and the chips on order already :)

That would be quite an amazing feat. Makes me wonder why, say MSI wouldn't do that themselves in their $5k Titan, just to claim the performance crown. Doesn't make sense. They could be under some weird agreement with Nvidia I guess. Also checked a couple of sources and all agreed that GDDR6X uses more power due to the higher bandwidth, despite being 15% more efficient per bit. Back of the envelope calculation suggests 27% more power draw. Probably OK in a larger laptop, best to check the VRM specs though.

Sounds ambitious. Are GDDR6 and GDDR6X modules electrically compatible? Even if they are, GDDR6X requires more power: wouldn't you fry the laptop mobo/VRMs that way? Even if the VRMs held up, what about the extra heat?

Exactly the same specs-wise. I guess we should be grateful NVidia didn't cut it down.

Good post, thanks for sharing @Reciever. Just to add another .02: the problem with politics is that on the one hand it is extremely divisive, so a lazy but safe policy is to just ban anything to do with it. The issue with that that policy is that politics is also (sometimes deeply) embedded in a wide range of topics, including technical ones; therefore an outright ban is seriously constraining the debate. I think the answer is something we have been practicing here already: the right culture of conversation. Let people make their points, hopefully in a manner that's not too outrageous, then counter politely if it feels like there is a locally novel relevant contribution to be made. That's it - there is no point going back and forth. Most people are not easily amenable to a change of political views; if it does happen, it tends to be a slow process that is not helped by fighting and arguing the toss at every opportunity. A degree of respect for cultural differences is helpful as well, and this includes some tolerance for the language people use due to their background etc., although I would agree on the profanity point. Yes, it has some light and humorous uses, but that can be very background-dependent and can easily be used offensively or perceived as such.

Exactly that, if I were to use the term "curing" to describe this process, it would have been for a lack of a better word. "Breaking in", or "melting in" would be another possible set of proxies here. The pad continues to perform exceptionally well, in fact I'm under the impression that the performance got better yet again. The question now is whether this is great just for CPUs operating in 80-100C range, or whether the benefits would extend to GPUs operating in 60-70ishC range. Anyone tried Honeywell application on a GPU?

Just watched a bit of the GN video review. LOL, the CPU has asymmetric design (8 cores have quicker access to the L3 cache but are slower, 8 cores are faster, but slower access to the 3D cache), therefore requires special scheduler (if not native support) to try and optimise the hybrid architecture. It's highly likely that the initial test results have yielded subpar performance because of to this. Apparently AMD are "working with Microsoft" on addressing the issue. That will most likely mean "Windows 11 only". I'm sure bro @Raiderman will be most impressed. Additionally, according to a chart from that PCMag review, 13900KS is slower than 13900K, so I guess they don't run sufficiently efficient cooling during their tests to leverage those extra hot CPUs.

Just to correct the inaccuracy: the blower 3090 Ti is silent to barely audible in a tower case. In a small case it would be audible, but nowhere close to a vacuum cleaner.

Asus-sponsored? ;)

A rigid ban on politics was one of the weaknesses of NBR. Here I would hope we can maintain the flexibility to touch upon more sensitive topics. The trick in my view is to keep the comments more on the nuanced side, self-moderate them if you will. The key test would be: am I offending people, rather than making interesting points that might even get someone on the other side of the fence thinking.

Out of interest, why can't you use it day to day? Worrying it will fail or something?

Guys, remember - be nice and build bridges, we don't want this to become Twitter 2.0 lol. Much more of a challenge than bunkering up in the comfort zone and firing at will, actual friend or foe. Right or left (and certainly centre), I'm sure we would all be fighting on the same side if it came to that.

64GB is fine, runs at full speed. It's just those 4 DIMM configs that are problematic. Little reason to believe things look better on a laptop. Would just get the fastest possible 2x16GB config in your shoes (or 2x32GB) to avoid frustration.

13900K + MEG ACE Z690 I mean it's a known issue, google/YT/RAM compatibility pages for various mobos will quickly corroborate.... unless something improved in the Z790. I think I did check that before but let me double-check. Edit: Yeah, looks like things have improved a bit on the Z790 - they now support up to 5200 on 4 DIMM configs, which I guess means it could go even faster.

That was based on my desktop experience. I find it hard to believe things are looking better on the mobile side, but for $400 you might just give it a go and find out.